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They had raised massive amount and not from good patient investors. No traction means Mustafa got fired. This is not surprising though but what is surprising is

They had raised massive amount and not from good patient investors. No traction means Mustafa got fired. This is not surprising though but what is surprising is MSFT picked him up. The guy is not technical, is not even visionary and had just got lucky hanging out with Demis. I would think Satya had better taste.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
Never underestimate the power of soft/social skills.
- rqtwteye 2y ago
  That’s where the real money is. Even the best technologists won’t make it very far if they don’t know how to play politics.
  - shermantanktop 2y ago
    One person’s “politics” is another person’s “demonstrate basic empathy and understand that your point of view is not universal.” Yes, there are creatures who have no real skills other than navigating political currents. But there are also creatures who can’t understand that technical brilliance is no excuse for utter social cluelessness.
    - gator123 2y ago
      I swear there needs to be an emotional maturity course or something in university
      - shermantanktop 2y ago
        That's the secret of higher education! Forget about the coursework, forget about the social aspect, forget about exposure to ideas. The actual value of universities is that you keep kids busy during the time when they are potentially destructive, and when they pop out they are now magically older and can handle some basic adulthood-on-training-wheels expectations. And yet a few hundred years ago we had 14-year-olds in the mines of Cornwall supporting whole families.
    - rqtwteye 2y ago
      You seem to think that people are either good self promoters or socially total clueless. There are a lot of very good people who have normal social skills but aren't good at self promotion (or just don't want to do it). These people won't go very far in most organizations. Self promoters without real skills will win over them. Best is to have real skill and also be a good self promoter.
      - shermantanktop 2y ago
        Of course there's a spectrum here. But when I read someone complain "I did great technical work but POLITICS," there are several possible scenarios: 1. The engineer is reasonable and the people they complain about are craven self-promoters with no real skills 2. The engineer is unreasonable and the people they complain about have normal, regular, business-normative expectations of engineer conduct. 3. Both - the engineer is bad and the self-promoting people are bad. Your scenario lines up with #1, i think. I see all three happening. I see many engineers who are gruff, entitled, lack the ability to talk about anything other than their own work, cultivate perceptions of technical status, and seem to actively want to make everyone avoid them. I also see social climbers (#2), but they are easy to spot and not that common in my environment (though others are of course different, including at previous companies).
skepticATX 2y ago
Mustafa wasn’t exactly on his best behavior at DeepMind, if the allegations are to be believed. It really is surprising that Microsoft would hire him.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  It's crazy there's zero accountability for bad behavior in tech. I went through my own story at Google, and seeing them say it was vaguely bad before promoting him to VP mirrors exactly the "intervention" I saw. The deck is completely stacked against you based on hierarchy. Behavior that a fast food manager would proactively solve in 30 seconds gets ignored in white collar tech. No one above you will even mention it - they know you can't win and they just hope you'll quietly give up. If someone above you in the informal hierarchy is messing with you, there's massive confirmation bias if you complain. They'll spin it to whoever you complain to make you the bad guy. HR never helps - their job is to investigate, and then give the results to someone 2-3 steps above you to do something with. The higher ups control the outcome, and they designed the power structure in the first place, their confirmation bias is accept the spin. If you want to survive, avoid conflict 100% of the time. Let people blame you, fail reviews undeservedly. My Google career ended from just doing exactly what I was supposed to do in order to get a 3 year delayed project done, that 4 separate VPs had been asking for all those years. I spent 6 months warning my manager fuckery was afoot. Didn't matter. TPM witnessed and defended me, didn't matter. Guy who led it hired his unqualified childhood buddy to replace me. Didn't matter. All on me. Everyone wanted to do it, and gee whillakers, refulgentis went mad and dropped the ball completely for some reason. Of course, 6 months later they delayed the project a 4th year because they could, documenting the only downside being a strained relationship with a less influential partner team. (my orgs managers didn't realize their...unvarnished...takes were in a doc shared with all of Google) At the end of the day, HR will funnel you into taking mental health leave -- 6 months worth, exactly long enough that an EEOC complaint can no longer be filed. (took me 6 years to realize why "disgruntled Google employee" news articles always included a bit referencing leave/6 months off as if it was a bad thing. go/mh-leave if you're at Google. You don't actually need to talk to HR, and I don't recommend going to them ever. I didn't for this, but they wouldn't have helped.) The whole system is broken.
Bjorkbat 2y ago
He also left DeepMind because of allegations of bullying employees (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Suleyman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Suleyman). Between that, what you just brought up, and the strange PR blitz he went on to promote his book, I kind of predicted Inflection would run into major trouble well before OpenAI and Anthropic
Workaccount2 2y ago
Some of the most damaging people I have met are people that you are absolutely enthralled with when you first get to know them.
- spaceman_2020 2y ago
  True, and some of the most effective people I know haven’t been impressive when you first meet them. I’m now extremely wary of blusteringly confident, glib talkers. Experienced a high correlation between these traits and sociopathy.
  - geraldhh 2y ago
    quite sure it's just unlucky ppl that got rewarded for acting like this
- rqtwteye 2y ago
  That would apply probably to most famous entrepreneurs. Whatever I have read about Jobs, Musk, Gates and others, they all are very willing to abuse people to achieve their goals.
  - maest 2y ago
    A => B <> B => A though
- coffeebeqn 2y ago
  First impressions is a sales skill
- baq 2y ago
  There’s a whole extremely famous book series on this very topic, you might have heard about it. The first volume’s title is ‘Paul is bad’ but it’s more widely known as ‘Dune’.
  - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    Dune is about worms.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

toomuchtodo 2y ago

Never underestimate the power of soft/social skills.

rqtwteye 2y ago
That’s where the real money is. Even the best technologists won’t make it very far if they don’t know how to play politics.
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  One person’s “politics” is another person’s “demonstrate basic empathy and understand that your point of view is not universal.” Yes, there are creatures who have no real skills other than navigating political currents. But there are also creatures who can’t understand that technical brilliance is no excuse for utter social cluelessness.
  - gator123 2y ago
    I swear there needs to be an emotional maturity course or something in university
    - shermantanktop 2y ago
      That's the secret of higher education! Forget about the coursework, forget about the social aspect, forget about exposure to ideas. The actual value of universities is that you keep kids busy during the time when they are potentially destructive, and when they pop out they are now magically older and can handle some basic adulthood-on-training-wheels expectations. And yet a few hundred years ago we had 14-year-olds in the mines of Cornwall supporting whole families.
  - rqtwteye 2y ago
    You seem to think that people are either good self promoters or socially total clueless. There are a lot of very good people who have normal social skills but aren't good at self promotion (or just don't want to do it). These people won't go very far in most organizations. Self promoters without real skills will win over them. Best is to have real skill and also be a good self promoter.
    - shermantanktop 2y ago
      Of course there's a spectrum here. But when I read someone complain "I did great technical work but POLITICS," there are several possible scenarios: 1. The engineer is reasonable and the people they complain about are craven self-promoters with no real skills 2. The engineer is unreasonable and the people they complain about have normal, regular, business-normative expectations of engineer conduct. 3. Both - the engineer is bad and the self-promoting people are bad. Your scenario lines up with #1, i think. I see all three happening. I see many engineers who are gruff, entitled, lack the ability to talk about anything other than their own work, cultivate perceptions of technical status, and seem to actively want to make everyone avoid them. I also see social climbers (#2), but they are easy to spot and not that common in my environment (though others are of course different, including at previous companies).

skepticATX 2y ago

Mustafa wasn’t exactly on his best behavior at DeepMind, if the allegations are to be believed. It really is surprising that Microsoft would hire him.

refulgentis 2y ago
It's crazy there's zero accountability for bad behavior in tech. I went through my own story at Google, and seeing them say it was vaguely bad before promoting him to VP mirrors exactly the "intervention" I saw. The deck is completely stacked against you based on hierarchy. Behavior that a fast food manager would proactively solve in 30 seconds gets ignored in white collar tech. No one above you will even mention it - they know you can't win and they just hope you'll quietly give up. If someone above you in the informal hierarchy is messing with you, there's massive confirmation bias if you complain. They'll spin it to whoever you complain to make you the bad guy. HR never helps - their job is to investigate, and then give the results to someone 2-3 steps above you to do something with. The higher ups control the outcome, and they designed the power structure in the first place, their confirmation bias is accept the spin. If you want to survive, avoid conflict 100% of the time. Let people blame you, fail reviews undeservedly. My Google career ended from just doing exactly what I was supposed to do in order to get a 3 year delayed project done, that 4 separate VPs had been asking for all those years. I spent 6 months warning my manager fuckery was afoot. Didn't matter. TPM witnessed and defended me, didn't matter. Guy who led it hired his unqualified childhood buddy to replace me. Didn't matter. All on me. Everyone wanted to do it, and gee whillakers, refulgentis went mad and dropped the ball completely for some reason. Of course, 6 months later they delayed the project a 4th year because they could, documenting the only downside being a strained relationship with a less influential partner team. (my orgs managers didn't realize their...unvarnished...takes were in a doc shared with all of Google) At the end of the day, HR will funnel you into taking mental health leave -- 6 months worth, exactly long enough that an EEOC complaint can no longer be filed. (took me 6 years to realize why "disgruntled Google employee" news articles always included a bit referencing leave/6 months off as if it was a bad thing. go/mh-leave if you're at Google. You don't actually need to talk to HR, and I don't recommend going to them ever. I didn't for this, but they wouldn't have helped.) The whole system is broken.

Bjorkbat 2y ago

He also left DeepMind because of allegations of bullying employees (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Suleyman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Suleyman). Between that, what you just brought up, and the strange PR blitz he went on to promote his book, I kind of predicted Inflection would run into major trouble well before OpenAI and Anthropic

Workaccount2 2y ago

Some of the most damaging people I have met are people that you are absolutely enthralled with when you first get to know them.

spaceman_2020 2y ago
True, and some of the most effective people I know haven’t been impressive when you first meet them. I’m now extremely wary of blusteringly confident, glib talkers. Experienced a high correlation between these traits and sociopathy.
- geraldhh 2y ago
  quite sure it's just unlucky ppl that got rewarded for acting like this
rqtwteye 2y ago
That would apply probably to most famous entrepreneurs. Whatever I have read about Jobs, Musk, Gates and others, they all are very willing to abuse people to achieve their goals.
- maest 2y ago
  A => B <> B => A though
coffeebeqn 2y ago
First impressions is a sales skill
baq 2y ago
There’s a whole extremely famous book series on this very topic, you might have heard about it. The first volume’s title is ‘Paul is bad’ but it’s more widely known as ‘Dune’.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  Dune is about worms.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]